These Ties That Bind
by flapjacks
Summary: So intricate or entangled as to make escape impossible. Unavoidable, yet too involved or complicated to solve. The agonisingly beautiful world of E/O.


_**Author's Note: **__Hey guys, I'm back! I know this is kinda short but it's just an introduction. Pretty please let me know what you think. Hopefully there's some interest because I'd really love to continue this.. My imagination is seriously going wild right now haha. Enjoy and don't forget to review! _

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_Shit._

The only thought she could formulate was _shit. _Her mind was completely blank. She could feel the faint pulsation of a headache forming. Her heart was pounding in her chest, beating wildly against her rib cage. The sound reverberated throughout her body, the rushed beat throbbing in her ears. She couldn't think clearly.

She could hear his heavy footsteps pounding the ground behind her. She was at a cross between walking briskly and jogging. He'd reach her soon. She reached down and pulled on the sides of her dress, balling the material in her fists, hitching it up minimise the very real risk of tripping in her six inch heels. He was getting closer. She started running now.

"Olivia!" she heard him call from behind her. _Why won't he just fucking go away?_

She kept running. _Should have gone the other way_, she told herself. _The exit must have been the other way._ Before she could comprehend what she was doing, Olivia turned abruptly into an empty exam room on her left. She flung the door closed behind her. She didn't turn back.

Olivia inhaled deeply. Three slow, deep breathes that didn't help. Didn't make a difference. Didn't clear her mind, or calm her heart, or cease the overwhelming feeling of suffocation. Head down, she walked around the room. Short, aimless steps, with sudden changes in direction. Her heart was pounding harder now, her head was spinning. She felt on the verge of collapsing.

The door never slammed.

The door never slammed. He'd caught it before it could. She knew that. Olivia knew he was in the room. She could feel him, his eyes on her. Watching. Waiting. Now she could hear his deep breaths. She didn't look up, she didn't dare. Olivia squeezed her eyes shut, and ran a hand through her soft hair. She took yet another pointless deep breath. It did little to settle her current state.

She wanted to scream at him. Yell. Punch him in the face. Hit him with a crowbar. Anything. Anything. But instead she's civil, more civil than he deserves. Civil, if you can call it that. She just wanted him gone. She needed space. She needed her own fucking space.

"Just leave me alone!" Olivia ordered quite calmly, but she heard the desperation in her voice and hated herself, because she knew he could hear it too. Her hands were shaking now, one hanging limply at her side while the other rested against the top of her head, fingers tangled in the brown strands near her hairline. She didn't turn around. She couldn't look at him. She was going to kill him if he said one word to her. She wished she'd brought her fucking gun.

He didn't respond straight away, and Olivia decided that he was making it worse. _Son of a bitch_, she thought.

The silence was eating away at her and she still couldn't think straight. She had to get out of the room. She has somewhere to be. _He knows that._ He knows that, and he's keeping her there anyway. _Son of a bitch._

Besides the pulsing in her ears, all she could hear was his breathing. His breaths and hers. Their breathing isn't in sync and Olivia wished she didn't notice that. She shouldn't notice that. She shouldn't.

Finally, he spoke.

"Olivia, I just wanted to make sure you're alright" Elliot said calmly, but he hardly got the words out before she'd responded.

_Fuck being civil_, she thought as she whirled around. Her large brown eyes widened, to the point where she was sure she looked like a complete madwoman, and locked on his. She clenched her teeth and Olivia imagined this is the kind of rage that she's witnessed him experience countless times in the past decade. Her heart still pounded in her chest, her ears, her temples. And before Olivia could stop herself, she was yelling almost frantically.

"NO! I'm not alright!" Her eyes were wide and full of rage and hatred, desperation and agony at the same time. "Are you satisfied?!"

Elliot's icy blue eyes were boring into her, and usually this kind of look would send a shiver down her spine. But it was too late for that. She was already burning with a kind of rage she didn't know she was capable of, so instead Olivia glared back. She didn't dare break eye contact with him. Instead, she continued.

She'd lost the urgency that she had when she spoke a few seconds earlier. This time her words were steady, unwavering. Forced. Olivia grated the words out, her teeth clenched. Gritted tightly. And each word was dragged out with agonising honesty, laced with biting venom and accusation.

"I'm. Not. Alright!"


End file.
